Current Graphical User Interface (“GUI”) based operating systems (“OS”) deploy various methods for allowing users to organize various application windows on their desktops. The current organizational techniques feature a number of basic window arrangements such as tiling, cascading and free form placement both within a single application and across multiple applications. It is desirable for these applications to be running simultaneously within the OS in a manner that allows the user to easily move or switch from one to another. None of these current applications provide a method for cascading a set of windows such that at least a portion of the windows are concurrently visible on the desktop display so as to maintain a continuously viewable organization as different windows in the cascade are activated.
The advantage of a cascaded window set is that all of the windows are viewable on the desktop without taking up a lot of desktop real estate. The disadvantage to prior approaches to cascading is that as soon as any window located behind the top window in a cascade is selected, it obscures the other windows in the cascade. Operating systems allow applications to “hook” into existing applications so that the existing applications can be augmented or controlled. The invention utilizes this technique in a novel and unobvious way to achieve its goal of providing a display that enables a plurality of application vendors to be cascaded so they are visible on the display.